SUMPTUOUS FEASTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 51, 27 January 1933, Page 3

SUMPTUOUS FEASTS.

LORD MAYOR’S BANQUETS. CUSTOM OF GENERATIONS. For generations past the most sumptuous feast in London has been the banquet given each year by the newly elected Lord Mayor. But even this great banquet, at which the guests number about 800, is much less sumptuous than it used to be, says a correspondent. The menu for the Lord Mayor s banquet of 1761, at which King George 111. and Queen Charlotte were guests, consisted of four services, comprising more than 50 different dishes. The first service included several varieties of fish, roast venison, Westphalian hams, chicken, lamb, beef and mutton; the second service included quails, woodcocks, pheasants, teal, snipe and partridges. Among the delicacies in the third service were ragout royal, fine rat liver green truffles, artichokes, mushrooms, knots of eggs, ducks, tongues and truffles in oil. . c u Tho fourth service consisted of cunOUS ornamental calces, blancmanges representing different figures, clear mar-

brays ut pastry and milla fuelles.” In tJie centre of the table, to tempt the unappeased appetites of guests, were “pyramids of shellfish, various cold viands, landscapes in jellies savoury cakes and grand epergnes filled with fine pickles, laspicks and rolards.” By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne the Lord Mayor’s banquet ' had been curtailed in the number and ' variety of dishes, but it was still a very ; sumptuous. meal. In 1837, the year of 1 the accession of Queen -Victoria, the ', general bill of fare included 220 tureens i 1 of turtle soup, 110 turkeys, 20 pea hens, ! | 20 dishes of wildfowl, 80 pheasants, 40 1 ' | dishes of partridges, 140 dishes of fowls, >45 hams, and 40 tongues. There were \| also enormous quantities of oysters and 1 j shellfish, and a large number of barons, ■ | rumps, and sirloins of beef and meat i pies. The sweet dishes included 140 j jellies and 130 dishes of tarts, and the • 1 dessert comprised 200 dishes of hothouse ■ grapes and 100 costly hothouse pinej apples. i During the Great War, when food (rationing was compulsorily enforced i | on the people of Great Britain, the < j Lord Mayor’s banquet became a com- : paratively modest feast; and though i lit still ranks as the most important - function of its kind in London, it has i never regained its old magnificence. <

THE MOST RECENT MENU. A London newspaper,' in describing the recent banquet at the Guildhall in celebration of- the beginning of a new Lord Mayor’s term of office, said: “No oysters or hors d’oeuvres. Simply soup, fish, entree, roti, , cold meats and sweets. And despite the solemn words of Brillat Savarin, no cheese. The soup, of course, was turtle, and truly admirable; the fish, homely fried turbot; the entree, neatly garnished lamb cutlets and preserved I peas; the roast, pheasants and partI ridges, with a salad of little merit, I seeing that it liad been dressed and set upon the tables before dinner began ; the cold meats included the renowned baron of beef, which was so good as to make one wish that the dinner had been restricted to tho I turtle soup and the cold beef, with cottage loaves and English mustard, and tankards of claret or ale. “As is usual at city feasts, the sweets, especially the orange jeli lies, rose high above the aver- ! age. The coffee, in rather larger cups than are customary, was. mercifully weakened to suit that increasing majority who like a mouthful of warm liquid after a meal, but are kept tossing about all night by good cafe noir.”